I can confidently say that the stupidest decision I ever made in my life was going to work for a mission group in Louisiana. In my opinion, I was only doing it with good intentions thinking that I would have a better view of the world. I thought I would discover the different cultures of the world while doing good things. The function of the group I intended to work with was to offer disaster relief by providing food, shelter, and medicine, among other essentials. The organization was led by a militant religious ideology in its approach. I believed that working with the group would strengthen my leadership and reprimand my actions. This ideological group provided the best training for inductees to supply the rural populations of the Third World. To achieve this goal, the team wanted me and others to provide training in the swamps of Louisiana. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”? Get an original essay The worst part of the tour was the training. The trainers put rocks in our backpacks and made us walk through the swamp with these heavy packs on our backs. Some members of my team were falling behind and our group leader would take their bag and add the weight to another member. Unfortunately, I was in the group that experienced the highest number of resignations. Each person who quit added their burden to mine. I was pushed forward by the leaders, who were always shouting at us to move forward. Any sign of exhaustion was met with mockery and criticism if we stopped. Phrases like “let the team down” and “fail the team” were used liberally towards us. Like a work mule, showing will and determination, I tried to move forward with the heavy weight. Eventually I couldn't bear the weight anymore because it was getting too heavy. I became still and my eyes were the only things above the water. The pressure of the bags pushed me, forcing my legs deeper into the mud and mire. I was sinking, and I thought I had the last moments before witnessing my death. I had two options; continue the test with the heavy weight on my back and die or remove the burden of living. I chose to live and free myself from the pressure and quagmire I found myself in. From my own experience with altruism, I believe it's not that different from our culture's love of the idea. Particularly given my generation's irrational adoption of this ideology, he describes how modern defenders of capitalism refer to it as a "common good" or "public good" rather than as the most rational response to selfish need of man to survive and prosper. I think this provides a good reason why we see college students sipping their Starbucks coffee and tweeting to their friends on their iPhones about their socialist ideals. (This is a laughable event if it weren't so scary that they couldn't even see the hypocrisy in their actions.) Altruism is the idea that a baker does not make bread for his own needs but does it because it helps him. society (Batson, 161). They do it for the love of giving food for the common good, but not because the baker needs to feed his family. They do it not because they want to create something and generate a profit for themselves or because the baker wants to live according to his own highest standard of living, but rather for the tribe, the group and the society and for the advantages ofsocial order. distilling altruism down to its core psychological epistemology would be a simple equation. The equation would equal this: “bad” people = selfish/self-serving people. This is the main difference between Ayn Rand and the current altruistic moral ideal found in our culture. Ayn develops this through her work of fiction “Atlas Shrugged”. Atlas Shrugged explains what happens when altruistic intentions and collectivist reasoning tie society as a whole to a mixed economy by giving a "what if" scenario. The “what if” scenario is what would happen if innovators, scientists and industrialists suddenly left a society that no longer valued their innovation and progress, but instead valued the swamp of stagnation, public opinion and social groups. The global economy is starting to collapse. People start to lose their jobs and business opportunities start to dry up. Many begin to loot and steal just to survive. All of Ayn Rand's heroes and heroines face this collective quagmire of altruism in which they have found themselves. My favorite is Hank Rearden. We may altruistically share certain personality traits and life experiences. Rearden's speech before the Supreme Court touched my heart. Rearden said: “I don’t want my attitude to be misunderstood. I'll be happy to go on the record...I work for nothing other than my profit - which I make by selling a product they need to men who are willing and able to buy it. I do not produce it for their benefit at the expense of mine, and they do not buy it for my gain at the expense of theirs: I do not sacrifice my interests to them and they do not sacrifice theirs to me; we deal as equals by mutual consent for mutual benefit – and I am proud of every penny I have earned this way. I am rich and I am proud of every penny I own (Rand, 480). I have earned my money by my own efforts, in free trade, and by the voluntary consent of all the men with whom I have dealt - the voluntary consent of those who employed me when I began, the voluntary consent of those who work for me now, the voluntary consent of those who employed me when I started, the voluntary consent of those who work for me now, the voluntary consent of those who buy my product (Rand, 600). “The speech is much longer, but the absolute beauty of his statements breaks the essence of capitalism from the fog of altruism. When Rearden said, “Mutual consent for mutual advantage,” she meant capitalism. If I want to get your money back, one of the things social media likes is word of mouth; I need to bring value to value. The beauty of trading (if done ethically) is that it ends in a win-win situation. I have to respect the individual as a whole to receive what I want from that person. Rearden expands on this by saying “the voluntary consent of every man with whom I have dealt…the voluntary consent of those who work for me now, the voluntary consent of those who buy my product” (Rand, 600). Capitalism is a system of self-interested mutual benefit that cannot be coerced by force unless a third party becomes involved, but can only be achieved by the voluntary consent of individuals and the approval of groups of people . Capitalism is born from respect for sovereign individuals. Ayn develops this idea further in her 1965 essay “What is Capitalism?” » Is man a sovereign individual who possesses his person, his spirit,, 332).